The Ten Best Bands From Kendall

There’s something about living away from the heart of Miami that gives these bands the space and ambition to succeed and be heard — perhaps it’s the lack of distractions like weekend all-nighters at Las Rosas or happy hour at Gramps. Many of these bands consistently venture to downtown, Wynwood, and Miami Beach to play gigs, and they are not to be missed.

A New Generation of Marleys at Kaya Fest 2019

Do you already have plans for 4/20? If you do, you might want to break them. Kaya Fest just announced the lineup for its Bayfront Park Amphitheater spectacle, and it falls on one of the most irie days of the year: April 20.

Relic Aims to Make Saturday Night Out Dancing Like Coming Home

With their weekly Saturday-night party, Relic, Travis Rogers and his partner Fiin wanted to fill a void they saw in Miami: an electronic music party specializing in local talent. “We want to organically grow a night that was about the music,” Fiin tells New Times. “People want to come to…

Miami-Born Rapper T-RO’s Journey From Football Field to Recording Studio

“There’s so many similarities to making it in football and making it in music,” T-RO, a onetime wide receiver and tight end at Southern California’s Mt. San Antonio College, tells New Times. “Football made my music career easier because I didn’t need to install discipline. I was coachable when I came into the rap game…

Ten Acts That Need to Perform in Miami Soon

When New Times wrote about the acts it would like to perform in Miami in 2017, news quickly followed that Lorde and Björk would finally make their way down to the tip of Florida. The city’s music lovers were also close to finally seeing Omar Souleyman onstage at the North Beach Bandshell last year until visa issues forced the show’s cancellation…

Rapper Karl “Dice Raw” Jenkins Shares Henry Box Brown With Miami Students

Rapper Karl “Dice Raw” Jenkins, known for his frequent collaborations with the Roots, speaks to an assembly of ninth-graders at the Young Men’s Preparatory Academy in Wynwood. He’s there to talk about his latest project, a stage musical about the life of Henry “Box” Brown, who escaped slavery by sealing himself inside a wooden crate and mailing it from Virginia to Pennsylvania.

III Points’ David Sinopoli on the Miami Music Acts to Watch in 2019

As cofounder of III Points, the wildly popular music festival held in Wynwood since its inception in 2013, David Sinopoli is keyed into Miami’s music scene. His level of expertise becomes apparent when he begins talking numbers: “With the Ground, Space, and Floyd, and before that Bardot, for the last eight years I’ve been programming 300 shows a year in Miami,”…

The 20 Best Miami Songs of 2018

With the federal government shut down and Donald Trump tweeting angrily at anyone who dares defy him, it’s safe to say 2018 was a shit year. We hope 2019 will be better, but let’s be honest: It will probably be worse. But one thing that certainly wasn’t shit this year…

Five Bars and Clubs Miami Lost in 2018

To live in Miami is to witness some of the city’s favorite bars, clubs, and music venues disappear into thin air — sometimes without warning. As options for live music diminish year-by-year, brave souls are up for the challenge of filling those voids. But before opening in a former space of one of the fallen, they might want to consider the history of these casualties. From bars to clubs, here are five venues the Magic City lost in 2018.

The Redemption of Miami’s Della Humphrey

On an ordinary fall afternoon in 1968, Clarence Reid was putting the finishing touches on “Don’t Make the Good Girls Go Bad,” the followup to his first R&B song, “Girls Can’t Do What the Guys Do [And Still Be a Lady].” “We had momentum with the previous hit,” recalls Willie Clarke, a Miami public schoolteacher…

By and for Young Artists, the Flex Brings a Fresh Music Competition to Miami

Kalil Bohannon invested only $150 in the launch of his avant-garde music showcase. It took place in an empty parking lot at Florida International University. Only 40 people showed up for the outdoor open mike composed of a tent, lights strung on a wall, and a few strewn-about tables. “It wasn’t that great,” Bohannon recalls. “I thought it went terribly. But the people who showed up, they loved it. They saw the vision, what I was trying to do.”

Samsara Cabaret Combines the Ethereal and the Burlesque in an Examination of Life’s Duality

According to Buddhist philosophy, humans live in an individual world created by subjective thoughts and perceptions. We are continuously re-creating our “self” through our experiences and choices, trapped in samsara — an endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth — until we are able to liberate ourselves from our illusions and find awakening through enlightenment…